I don't really see how what most organisms do is relevant; we're discussing what's moral/ethical for human beings. This is quite relevant to deciding whether to say, help out Africa (which with its very high birth rates is equivalent to plumping for total) or work on issues in the rest of the world (average).
As I understand it, there is widespread disagreement on that issue. Most humans don't seem to have a clear idea of what their goals are, and of those that do, there is considerable disagreement about what those goals are.
Scientists can model human goals. The result seems to be that humans act so as to try to maximise their genes - and sometimes the memes they have been infected with. Basically all goal-directed behaviour is the result of some optimisation process - and in biology, that process usually involves differential reproductive success of replic...
Here's our place to discuss Less Wrong topics that have not appeared in recent posts. If something gets a lot of discussion feel free to convert it into an independent post.